Here in San Francisco, the common sauna wisdom is that we just experienced one of the warmest winters in recent memory. The Dolphin Club’s Polar Bear Challenge was hardly challenging, and the South End’s “Dreaded 9th” of February swim was hardly dreaded.

Just how warm was it, though? I crunched the numbers from the NDBC, because, well, why not.

Here we see the last 15+ months of data from the Crissy Field station (FTPC1) inside San Francisco Bay, plotted in solid black. The dashed green, red, and blue lines show the long-term average, maxima, and minima for each day of the year, summarized over the eight years of available data from that station.

From July 2014 until just the past few days (early April 2015), Bay waters have been hovering 2-3 degrees (F) above the all-time highs (going back to 2006), and about 5 degrees above the long-term averages.

Eight years isn’t much data, unfortunately. Can we do better?

A bit: Lightstation 46026 – about two-thirds of the way out to the Farallones – has data going back to 1982.…

A “dead fish swim” is a swim that even a dead fish could finish. (Maybe not literally… but sometimes almost literally.)

This is a bit of local (SF) open-water swimming lingo that I wish would be more widely used (hence this post).

Dead fish swims require bodies of water affected by substantial currents — as fast or faster than “fast” swimmers swim. Let’s set the minimum current threshold for a dead fish swim (arbitrarily) at 2 knots.

Most of the organized swims put on by the Dolphin and South End Rowing Clubs in San Francisco Bay are dead fish swims. Coghlan Beach to Aquatic Park on a flood (the traditional route for the fall Inter-Club Triathlon) is a dead fish swim. Pier 7 to Aquatic Park (the most popular SERC “sunriser” route) on a big ebb is a dead fish swim.

Even the challenging Bay to Breakers swim is sort of a dead fish swim — until the last mile or so, when the current goes slack and you have to get around Seal Rocks and into the beach via actual swimming (and bodysurfing).…

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.—An international review panel ratified five marathon swims submitted to the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF) as part of the inaugural year of its Documented Swims program. The panel also endorsed Chloё McCardel as the World Record holder for Longest Unassisted Ocean Swim.

All ratified swims were independently observed, exhaustively documented, and conducted according to the highest standards of transparency and integrity.

– to recognize outstanding photographs of (and by) marathon swimmers around the world.
– to render a ‘snapshot’ of the year in our sport — a sport that few ever witness, outside the small contingent aboard an escort boat.
– to raise a small amount of funds to offset the operating expenses of our website, marathonswimmers.org.

Donal posted a Forum thread soliciting images, fielded the submissions (over 100), and winnowed them to a mere dozen — plus one of his own, ‘The Channel Swimmers,’ as a cover:

‘The Channel Swimmers.’ Image by Donal Buckley

The resulting set of images is (in my clearly unbiased opinion) stunning, and eloquently captures the peculiar beauty of our sport. The calendar can be previewed and/or purchased here:

By fortuitous circumstance, I’ve been fortunate to observe two out of the four successful solo swims in recorded history between the Farallon Islands and the California mainland.

In April, Craig Lenning stunned the marathon swimming world with the first successful Farallons solo in nearly 50 years (read observer report). And then 12 days ago, Joe Locke claimed Ted Erikson’s record on the longer, trickier course to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Craig and Joe are two of the toughest swimmers I’ve ever seen, and I was honored to accompany them on their respective journeys.

The Farallons, a grim rocky outcropping at the edge of the continental shelf, are similar in land mass to Anacapa Island but more than twice as far out, across far angrier seas. They’re often visible on a clear day from San Francisco, especially from elevation, but I think most San Franciscans hardly notice them. Living in the Outer Sunset (which my girlfriend, a Farallon relay swimmer herself, jokingly calls the “Inner Farallons”), I can see them from my living room, and I watch them every chance I get. …